Most crime in NSW has been declining since the early 2000s, and the state's current murder rate is half what it was in 1988. So why is the NSW prison population growing?

Despite declining gun fatalities, there should be no room for complacency in Australia, with an estimated 260,000 illegal guns in Australia – including this MP5K 9mm machine gun, seized in Queensland in 2013.
Dan Peled/AAP15 avril 2015

Queensland has a new Labor minority government, led by Annastacia Palaszczuk, after the shock defeat of the Liberal National Party. Labor’s pre-election promises were “modest”, leaving many now wondering…

A spate of shootings and public brawls prompted a Queensland government crackdown on bikie gangs – but there is much more to the state’s falling crime rates than just getting bikies off the streets.
AAP Image/Dan Peled19 janvier 2015

It’s the question everyone is asking – could the Sydney siege have been predicted and therefore prevented based on the past behaviour of gunman Man Haron Monis. Monis’ troubled history was well known to…

An increasingly popular weekend pastime among fans of Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Inspector Morse and others, are murder mystery parties at which participants pit their wits against secret killers. But…

As was confirmed recently by figures from Police Scotland, there has been a 23% increase in recorded cases of rape north of the border over the past year. In 2013-14, the first year of Police Scotland’s…

The stabbing to death by a 15-year-old pupil of Anne Maguire, a much loved teacher who had worked at Corpus Christi Catholic College in Leeds for more than 40 years, has attracted much attention across…

Smash-and-grab: statistics only give us a fractured picture of crime.
raleighwoman29 janvier 2014

The Office for National Statistics released the latest crime statistics last week, and the headline findings are really rather remarkable. Although approximately 8 million offences were recorded by the…

With so many lurid reports of violence on our TV screens, it’s easy to think that the police know about all or most incidents. But they don’t. The National Crime Victimisation Survey in the US and the…

There is a growing consensus among scholars that rates of violence in Western countries are steadily declining, and have been doing so for centuries. The statistic used by most people who support this…

Alcatraz has shut, but many more prisons have opened since in the US.
Shobe834/Flickr26 juin 2013

It appears that Britain is following the United States in its addiction to the use of prison terms. The USA has led the way in the penal arms race with the introduction of such measures as “three strikes…